Sounds strange. But that’s exactly what a LeadPages™ customer just did.

Last month, LeadPages™ customer, The Foundation, ran an A/B split test to see if simply deleting the call to action headline on this squeeze page would make a difference.

This quick split test boosted their conversions by 28%. Take a look…

Common sense says this Video Squeeze Page with a headline would win. But this split test proved the common sense wisdom wrong.No one expected this, but deleting the headline on this Video Squeeze Page boosted response by 28%.

According to the Foundation’s ad manager, Charlie Vallely, the Foundation ran this test because they wanted to let the video speak for itself — and see if deleting the headline impacted conversions. But even they were surprised at the results.

What I found interesting: The Foundation team also ran this same test on their homepage. In both cases, the “no headline” variation won out by a significant margin.

Personally, I also like this test because it’s so simple. You don’t have to stretch your brain cells to come up with a second headline. Or tweak the page design. Or even try testing a different content bribe (or “lead magnet”).

That makes this one of the easiest split tests you can run. I recommend you try it.

How to Run This Test Yourself

If you’re already a LeadPages™ pro customer, you can run a similar split test for yourself in just five simple steps. We integrated our landing page builder with a split-test tool (something no one else does), so you can set up any A/B split-test in minutes.

To run your own split-test inside LeadPages™…

Find the page that you want to run a split-test on.

Enable split-testing by clicking the “create test” button at the top of your page.

Add a variation of your page by clicking “add variation” in the drop-down menu under “create test.”

Select which page you want to make a variation of.

Save the page — and you’re done! Ready to split-test.

If you’ve never done a split-test inside LeadPages™ before, I recommend you also check out our split-testing video, for a tutorial on how to execute these five steps.

If you’re not a customer, there are plenty of other split-testing tools out there. Simply do a quick search and you’ll find plenty.

What Else Can I Tell You About Split-Testing?

A big thanks to Dane Maxwell and his team at the Foundation for giving us permission to publish this split test. If you don’t know Dane, you can check out the work he does with software entrepreneurs here.

Also, I will be featuring more split tests like the Foundation’s here on the blog in the weeks to come. So before you go, tell me…

What other kinds of split tests would you like to see here?

Have you had any success with split-testing in the past?

What’s the toughest thing about split-testing that you’d like me to cover?

As always, please respond in the comments below. Speak to you soon.

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According to David Ogilvy, this makes sense. He mentions putting headlines BELOW pictures. So, a third test could be to move the “headline” below the pic but above the button. Still might not matter… but hey, that’s why we test, right?

Kat Von Rohr

Great to see you here in the comments Sean! 🙂

It’s a great point. Thanks for posting.

Warm regards,
Kat, Writer for LeadPages

Paul

The obvious conclusion: Relevant headlines decrease response lol 😉

Not only that but changing the text of your optin button from 3rd person to 1st person and changing the color of your button from green to red will double your response.

Just goes to show that split testing needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

I’m not sure what you mean by “just goes to show that split testing needs to be taken with a grain of salt.” Are you suggesting that organizations should not do testing and instead just wing it based on intuition?

Of course what works varies depending on your market, traffic source, offer, etc. We’re not suggesting that this works with every customer in every market. We’re just showing a case study of what worked in one instance. Everyone should do their own split testing.

Thanks, Lawton. You wrote: “Can we move headlines below the video like that?” What do you mean by “like that”? Are you referring to a specific example in the split test above? The headline wasn’t moved, it was deleted.

My apologies for the delay Justin. We have an amazing support staff, so it’s likely they have already gotten back to you by now. But if not, please let me know and I’ll follow up with our team for you.

Warm regards,
Kat, writer for LeadPages

Karl Eberhardt

This is really great stuff! I just started started doing a lot of A/B testing. I am trying out Visual Website Optimizer ( free trial for now to try it out) maybe I just need to get LP so its all in one tidy package.

…and this is kinda funny last night I paid for a usability study (3 actually) .

I paid for a usability study from Visual Website Optimizer on a new website i built strictly for PPC (they use mechcanical turk for usability respondents) and the 5 respondents ripped my new site to shreads. So I put a competitors webite in a study and they ripped it too… then as a control …. I put Leadpages landing page and well take a look at this screen shot. each study cost me $30 btw…

Now I have doubts about who these “usability testing people” are that Visual Website Optimizer is using. I also specified USA respondents but obviously not the case looking at the spelling of “colours”